ir India’s recent decisionto have a seating sectionexclusively for womenand physical restraintsfor unruly passengershas met with an angryand vocal backlash from manyquarters, although the airlineinsists that the changes are driv-en by passenger demand.

Following two high-profile
incidents in which women on
board Air India flights were
groped by men, the airline decided to equip all its aircraft with
two sets of plastic handcuffs for
use on passengers charged with
offensive behavior. The
company further
pledged to block off
two rows in economy class – a
total of six seats – for women
traveling alone on all flights starting in late January.

This is the first example of
gender segregation on any airline
in the world. Israel’s airline, El Al,
has come under fire for attempts
at gender segregation under different circumstances: Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, not wanting to sit near female passengers,
have pressured the airline to
change women’s pre-assigned
seats to accommodate them. In
Air India’s case, the move could
be seen as a natural extension of
India’s standard method of curbing sexual harassment and groping through gender segregation;
those who have traveled by train
in India are already familiar with
women-only coaches on commuter trains and, in metropolitan
areas like Mumbai and Delhi,
“Ladies’ Special” women-only
trains, taxis and rickshaws.

In December, this hazard in air
travel for women came to light
after police at Newark Airport
greeted an Air India flight from
Mumbai and arrested a man,
charging him with groping a
female passenger while she slept.
The man had moved from his
business class seat to an empty
seat in economy beside the sleeping woman. Authorities later
released what they described as a
note of apology from the man,
written on the Dec. 21, 2016 flight.

“Please do not let a moment'sstupidity on my part kill my chil-dren's future. I beg of you. I knowI should have thought of thesethings before,” said the note,which was published, in part, inthe Times of India. “I wish I couldrewind time and correct what hashappened. But please do not letfive minutes of stupidity kill whatI have worked on for 40 years...Because of the immigration sta-A senior Air India official saidin a Jan. 13 Washington Postreport thatinflight misbehaviorhas been on the increase recently.

“Our pilots adopt a zero tolerance
for offenses like sexual harassment, both of air hostesses or flyers, and hand over offenders to
law enforcing agencies on landing,” said the official, who was
originally quoted in the Times of
India.

Demand for women’s spacesmakes sense in an environmentlike a train or rickshaw, whereintense close quarters and rela-tive anonymity make groping andharassment essentially seem con-sequence-free for predators. Onan airplane, where the repercus-sions are far more serious andwhere anonymity is not an expec-tation, this behavior takes anoth-er level.

"We are doing this as we get
lots of requests by female passengers at the check-in counter who
want to sit next to another
woman, rather than a male pas-senger," said Prasada Rao, Air
India's general manager for corporate communications. "It is not
connected to the reports of sexual assaults. It's more to do with
the fact that economy class doesn't have much space to move
around easily and comfortably for
women, so this option will give
them more choice."

Many women, on the otherhand, see the new policies as theairline’s way of paying bureau-cratic lip service to women’s safe-ty. Further, some fear that theairline is acceptinggroping and harassment asinevitable, and that the newmeasures are a patronizing wayof “protecting” women.

“As a woman, this is insult-ing,” one Twitter user wrote inresponse to Air India’s announce-ment. “My gender doesn't makeme an invalid. This is what mod-ern day sexism looks like.”At least 14 countries across theglobe in addition to India havesex-segregated buses or traincompartments, includingBangladesh, Mexico, Thailand,Brazil, Egypt, Japan, andRussia. Among most of thesecountries, women have reportedhaving to fend off men who tryto board women-only carriagesand buses due to lack of enforce-ment, and continuing to dealwith groping and catcalling onstation platforms before andafter their journeys."The emerging inter-est in several countriesin women-only initia-tives should be seen asan opportunity for improv-ing security in cities but not asa silver bullet for dealing withgender-based violence in trans-portation and urban settings,"Julie Babinard, a senior transportspecialist from the World Bank,told Reuters in 2014."Women-only initiatives arenot likely to provide long-termsolutions as they only segregateby gender and provide a short-term remedy instead of address-ing more fundamental issues."

Many women are also frustrated that the responsibility is once
again on them to protect themselves from harassment, just like
choosing to stay home at night
and wear conservative clothing;
the blame lies with the woman if
she is perceived to be making
herself “available” by riding on
mixed gender transportation.
“Women who choose to not travel by ladies-only coaches are seen
as fair game sometimes,” said
one respondent during a 2010
workshop on street harassment
in Japan. “The ‘why are they here
if not to be felt up’ logic.”

“It simply places the onus onwomen to protect themselvesinstead of on harassers to stoptheir behavior,” writes HollyKearl, founder of the nonprofitHYPERLINK " http://www.stop-streetharassment.org/" StopStreet Harassment, UN consultantfor the Safe Cities GlobalInitiative, and author of threebooks on sexual harassment.“Notably, a decade after Tokyolaunched women-only subwaycars, a 2014 YouGov poll rankedTokyo among the top five cities inthe world for the most physicalharassment on public transporta-tion.”Men have also reacted stronglyagainst the new rules. “Seat seg-regation is not there even in mid-dle Eastern carrier. Don't turninto DTC bus service withreserved seats,” a male usertweeted, referring to a bus routein Delhi.

Laura Bates, founder of theLondon-based anti-harassmentEveryday Sexism Project, saysthat sex segregation is “incrediblyinsulting to the vast majority ofmen.”“It is also failing female pas-sengers not to tackle the problemat its root," Bates argues.

Whether the new Air India
measures can do more than
inflame people remains to be
seen.

A

PredatorsUp in the AirTaking Women’s Expectations Sky-High

By Sarita Hiatt

ir India’s new policies,controversial as they are,are clear evidence thatIndia itself is changing. And theairline’s new practices reflectthat.

So says researcher and lec-turer, Jyoti Argade, who teach-es and writes on Indian cultureand politics. “Women are tak-ing control of their own spaceand bodies in a way that Indiahas never seen before,” shesaid. “Women have decidednot to get married, to move outof their homes, have earnedmoney to go on trips.”And, she said, men’s socialmobility has changed in theface of women’s; men look atwomen’s upward mobilitywhile their own status remainsthe same, and perceive athreat.

“So, they do something like
turn around and grope the
woman next to them,” she said.

Such assaults have been
increasingly in the spotlight in
the last five years. The
December 2012 gang rape of a
student on a Delhi bus, an
assault that resulted in her
death, left the world stunned.
More recently, at a New Year’s
celebration in Bangalore, a
crowd of men groped and
attempted to undress a number
of women, while shouting lewd
comments. That incident too
received international coverage, as did the reaction of officials — some of whom were
quick to turn the blame on the
women.

G.. Parameshwara, the homeminister of Karnataka, told a TVinterviewer the day after theattacks that the women’sWestern-style dress probablyencouraged the incident. “Sosome disturbance, some girlsare harassed, these kind ofthings do happen,” he said inthe broadcast interview.

Air India, then, functionsnow as a kind of mirror. Agardesaid the airline’s new policiesare “emblematic of the waythat India is changing.”“Air India understands thatit’s going to have businesswomen and CEOs on itsflights,” she says.

While the new protectivemeasures may be flawed, shesaid, they are an acknowledg-ment that women will be trav-eling alone and should be ableto do so without harassment.